Office 365 is one of the brighter offerings in the Microsoft Cloud stable. Not only does it provide web-based and offline Microsoft Office product access and storage, but Microsoft knows business. When the company architects and releases a product, there's usually a good administrative function included. Other cloud providers, particularly those that attempt to provide Office-type apps for businesses (ahem, Google), just don't seem to get how business works and how IT functions to support end-users.

Late last week, Microsoft unveiled a new offering for administrators of Office 365 to stack additional value on top of the already existing administrative features. Message Center is a new component that simply adds an Inbox for direct communications between Microsoft and those tasked with managing and supporting Office 365 for their organization.

Using Message Center, Microsoft will periodically send Inbox messages to notify Office 365 administrators about important events, such as the end of Windows XP support, or upgrade suggestions, such as when it detects end-users who have out-of-date Internet Explorer (IE) versions.

Message Center is intended to highlight important areas where administrators can take proactive actions to keep Office 365 problems to a minimum. As an admin for your organization, you can access the new feature in the Admin console (shown above).

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